AEvent has the native ability to send the right email at the right time to the right audience using IContact Automations. Having said that, IContact only allows adding to lists, as opposed to tags, campaigns, or workflows as in other ESPs, which complicates things a little. In order to achieve this, there are a few items that need to be set up, both inside AEvent and Icontact.
In this tutorial, we're building out a single webinar timeline that includes email sequences being sent by our ESP (IContact).
In order to achieve this, we need to create timeline actions within AEvent, that will add the registrant to our lists at set times leading up to the webinar. We're then going to create single-email automations within IContact, that are triggered to send when these actions are fired from Aevent.
As best practice, we like to send out reminders 1 hour before and another 15 minutes prior to the start of the webinar. So we need to create a few timeline actions that will add the registrant to our list exactly 1 hour before and another that will do the same thing 15 minutes before.
☑️Remember:
We create a new list or use an existing one inside IContact when setting up this integration to create the list actions, aevent-1hrbefore, and aevent-15minbefore
(which also creates them within Aevent).
Once we've created and added the action to the timeline, as shown above, it will look like this:
Now with that done, we need to link them together with automations within IContact.
💡 Note:
If we simply wanted to add a list for tracking purposes, we would be done.
(After the webinar ends, CRM tracking is invaluable, but that isn't what this tutorial is about.)
Creating an IContact Automation
Next, within our IContact account, we're going to create 2 automations, which are initialized by the actions we created in AEvent.
Open your IContact App, and navigate to Automation.
Step 1: We need to create the automation
Step 2: Name the automation & select "Subscribe Event" as trigger
Step 3: Select the list/s for the trigger & save
Step 4: Select the timing & audience
Step 5: Select "Send Message"
Now we just need to create and edit the email within the IContact email editor.
💪 Pro Tip: Utilize Dynamic Personalization Variables In Your Emails
We can set up the emails to be evergreen with date/time of the webinar presentation, the replay sequence, evolving join/replay links, etc.
We have access to all the Personalization / Custom / Merge Fields, which are created in AEvent and have been sent along from the registration process.
And that's it! With the automation we've now created in AEvent and IContact, ALL registrants that register for the webinar, regardless of frequency or time that it is running, will receive the 1 hour before email.
So we've walked through creating a timeline action within AEvent using IContact Add to List. We then created a reactive automation within IContact that will send an email when the action is fired in Aevent, and we wrote an email to be sent in the IContact email editor.
👍 Best Practice
Always divide emails by automation/sequence leading up to the event.
Now, if we were building out a timeline/email sequence, say for Non Attendees, we would create everything as we did in this tutorial, however we would also have added additional emails to the IContact Automation that was triggered by AEvent. Send an email, wait 1 day, send another, etc.
Below, we've provided a suggested email sequence (Indoctrination sequence not required, but we HIGHLY recommend using one.):
On-Registration Emails (single campaign email)
Sent at the time of registration: aevent-onregistration
Indoctrination Emails (single campaign emails):
3 days before (9am EST): aevent-3daysbefore
2 days before (9am EST): aevent-2daysbefore
1 day before (9am EST): aevent-1daybefore
Day of (9am EST): aevent-dayof
Day of (1 hour before): aevent-1hour
Day of (5 minute before): aevent-5min
Post Webinar Emails (To initiate entire replay/closeout sequence):
Non-Attendee: aevent-nonattendee
Attendee: aevent-attendee
☝️ Final Note:
In this tutorial, we created timeline actions to initiate automations using IContact.
If we want to create an automation using an Add-Tag on registration, the setup process will be the same.
